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Title: The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Heckman, James J. Masterov, Dimitriy V. |
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The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children NBER Working Paper No. 13016, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2007. Also: http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13016 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Childbearing; Children, Academic Development; Children, Behavioral Development; Crime; Education; Family Structure; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Skill Formation This paper presents a productivity argument for investing in disadvantaged young children. For such investment, there is no equity-efficiency tradeoff. [It] graphs time series of alternative measures of the percentage of children in disadvantaged families. The percentage of children born into, or living in, nontraditional families has increased greatly in the last 30 years.1,2 Approximately 25% of children are now born into single parent homes. While the percentages of children living in poverty and born into poor families have fallen recently, they are still high, especially among certain subgroups. Adverse environments place children at risk for social and economic failure. The accident of birth plays a powerful role in determining adult success.3 Many have commented on this phenomenon, and most analyses have cast the issue of assisting children from disadvantaged families as a question of fairness or social justice. This paper makes a different argument. |
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Bibliography Citation
Heckman, James J. and Dimitriy V. Masterov. "The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children." NBER Working Paper No. 13016, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2007. |